Visit in Lancaster (21 to 26 of June 2015)

Lancaster University.Tuesday 23 June.

Gordon Walker showed us the geographical science department facilities and the Lancaster Environmental Center, where the Demand center is located. University campus is approximately five km south of the center of Lancaster city. Many students allocate on campus, thus many innovative ideas on energy communities can be traced to this place of about 1.5 square km.

Front of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Lancaster University.

A campus tour guided by a representative of the student’s union explained us the project Green Lancaster. This project proposes activities in a more sustainable way of live. One of them is to transform the campus into one that provides healthy food for its inhabitants.

It includes a project with plants, herbs and fruit in many places of the campus. The students, by volunteering and with some extra funds, recovered a patrimonial house located within the campus.

In the Eco Hub next to the house you may see a chicken in a house, an earth oven, plans, protocols, signs publicizing and motivating students to farm, collect and take care of plants, trees, among other things. In short it is a socio-technical system of transiting more sustainably.

Activists on and off campus are important.

For more information visit: http://lusu.co.uk/get-involved/green-lancaster/

Figure: Student union representative explained the Green Lancaster Project

Figure: Signals explaining the sites to pick your own herbs, fruits, etc.

Figure: Application to collect food during the right month of the year.

Figure: One of the finger pickin’ growing herbs planters in one of the busiest places of the campus

Figure: Apple trees planted by Green Lancaster and PV panels on the facility roofs.

Figure: Some instruction on EcoHub

Some Chickens posing for us

The earth oven built for EcoHub meetings.

Recovered Patrimonial house, which now is used as storage for tools used for plantation and agricultural practices

Figure: Vegetarian buffet provided by campus catering. University of Lancaster.

Figure: Resting and happy after lunch. From left to right: Becky Willis, Cristian Parker, Gordon Walker, behind the volunteer students in the garden.

Visit to Halton Mill co-housing project.

Welcome signs at the Halton Mills Co-housing

Chips for heating plant

Biomass for heating power plant for eco-housing

Electric cars park in co-housing

Bicycle garage of co-housing

Communitarian place for Porridge

Communitarian food pantry

Organization of the communitarian material and schedules.

Figure: Common places with view to Low River

Living room common areas

Activity plans for each week

Law River and its birds

Hydro turbine for local community project

Micro-hydro power plant premises

Cristian Parker and Gordon Walker listening to our host engineer in Co-Housing

Landscape of the Law River.

Seminar from 15 to 17 hrs.

Gordon Walker – ‘Making Power Differently: Exploring the motives and meanings of community renewable energy development in cases from the UK and South Korea’

Ally Gormally – ‘Community renewable energy in Cumbria’

Simon Pardoe – ‘Reducing Energy Consumption through Community Knowledge Networks’ (presentation and videos)

Gloria Baigorrotegui and Christian Parker: ‘Lights and shadows for isolated energy communities in Patagonia’

Becky Whittle: ‘Community food-growing initiatives’

Becky Whittle and Noel Cass attending seminar.

Gordon Walker during his presentation

Simon Pardoe starting his presentation on Reducing Energy Consumption through Community Knowledge Networks

Becky Whittle: ‘Community food-growing initiatives’

Thursday 25 of June

Meeting in Gordon’s office

We coordinated the deliverables.

Conceptualizing Energy Communities, considering different case studies; the first outline will be discussed in November.

The interest in everyday practices in energy technologies at home; how people use technology. Gordon highlights that there are a lot of things that are taken for granted, that is very different from UK. (Lightings, cook, plugs-in, etc.)

Some aspects to be considered are Energy Communities and alternatives ways of shaping it.

Meeting with Dr. Harry Hoster.

He talked about his work at Energy Lancaster, where the physic-chemical aspect of surfaces and solids is considered to assess demand and supply of energy. One of his areas is to improve the electromechanical performances of fuel cells and batteries. Harry is also interested in the performance of energy consumption on university campus. More details here: http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/chemistry/people/harry-hoster